My poem "Zeitgeber" has been accepted by Mythic Delirium. In celebration, I am posting some words that do not belong to me. For the last few nights, I have been reading Louis Untermeyer's Modern American and British Poetry (1942), which belonged to my grandmother; I never took a formal course in poetry that wasn't in another language, but I don't know how I missed some of these pieces. When she was alive and the book was upstairs in my grandparents' house in Maine, it was the first place I read H.D. Here and there are her annotations in pencil and blue ink, which is now fading out to rust.
Week-End by the Sea (Edgar Lee Masters)
I.
Far off the sea is gray and still as the sky,
Great waves roar to the shore like conch shells water-groined.
With a flapping coat I step, brace back as the wind drags by;
No ship as far as the seam where the sea and the sky are joined.
I am watched from the hotel, I think. Who faces the cold?
Why does he walk alone? 'Tis a bitter day.
But I trade dreams with the sea, for the sea is old,
And knows the dreams of a heart whose dreams are gray.
Two apple trees alone in the waste on a sandy ledge,
Grappled and woven together with sprouts in a blackened mesh,
They are dead almost at the roots, but nourish the sedge;
They are dead and at truce, like souls of outlived flesh.
I have startled a gull to flight. I thought him a wave:
White of his wings seemed foam, breast hued like the sand-hued roll.
When a part of the sea takes wing you would think that the grave
Of dead days might release to the heights a soul.
II.
I slept as the day was ending: scarlet and gilt
Behind the Japan screen of shrubs and trees.
I awoke to the scabbard of night and the starry hilt
Of the sunken sun, to the old unease.
Sleeping, a void in my heart is awake:
Waking, there is the moon and the wind's moan.
I would I were as the sea that can break
Over the rocks, indifferent and alone.
III.
I have climbed to the little burial plot of the lost
In wrecks at sea. West of me lies the town.
Below are the apple trees, pulling each other down.
Children are romping to school, ruddy from frost.
How the wind grieves around these weedy wisps,
And shakes them like a dog, sniffing from patch to patch.
I try the battered gate, lift up the latch,
And enter where the grass like a thistle lisps.
Lost at sea! Nothing thought out or planned!
What need? Thought enough in a moment that battles a wave!
What words tell more? And where is the hand to grave
Words that tell so much for the lost on land?
( Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time. )
Week-End by the Sea (Edgar Lee Masters)
I.
Far off the sea is gray and still as the sky,
Great waves roar to the shore like conch shells water-groined.
With a flapping coat I step, brace back as the wind drags by;
No ship as far as the seam where the sea and the sky are joined.
I am watched from the hotel, I think. Who faces the cold?
Why does he walk alone? 'Tis a bitter day.
But I trade dreams with the sea, for the sea is old,
And knows the dreams of a heart whose dreams are gray.
Two apple trees alone in the waste on a sandy ledge,
Grappled and woven together with sprouts in a blackened mesh,
They are dead almost at the roots, but nourish the sedge;
They are dead and at truce, like souls of outlived flesh.
I have startled a gull to flight. I thought him a wave:
White of his wings seemed foam, breast hued like the sand-hued roll.
When a part of the sea takes wing you would think that the grave
Of dead days might release to the heights a soul.
II.
I slept as the day was ending: scarlet and gilt
Behind the Japan screen of shrubs and trees.
I awoke to the scabbard of night and the starry hilt
Of the sunken sun, to the old unease.
Sleeping, a void in my heart is awake:
Waking, there is the moon and the wind's moan.
I would I were as the sea that can break
Over the rocks, indifferent and alone.
III.
I have climbed to the little burial plot of the lost
In wrecks at sea. West of me lies the town.
Below are the apple trees, pulling each other down.
Children are romping to school, ruddy from frost.
How the wind grieves around these weedy wisps,
And shakes them like a dog, sniffing from patch to patch.
I try the battered gate, lift up the latch,
And enter where the grass like a thistle lisps.
Lost at sea! Nothing thought out or planned!
What need? Thought enough in a moment that battles a wave!
What words tell more? And where is the hand to grave
Words that tell so much for the lost on land?
( Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time. )
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